


On the Cusp of Revolution

by TheWalkingGrimes



Series: Tales of District Four [17]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: (how is this a children's book?), (not of a major character it is just mentioned), And Implications, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Murder, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Quarter Quell (Hunger Games), Rape/Non-con Elements, Sex Trafficking, Violent Thoughts, mentioned typical Hunger Games Death/Violence, no sex but sexual elements and frank language, nothing graphic here but it's dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:00:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27614531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWalkingGrimes/pseuds/TheWalkingGrimes
Summary: Finnick is in the Capitol when he sees the Quarter Quell announcement.
Relationships: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair, Finnick Odair/Other(s), Katniss Everdeen & Finnick Odair
Series: Tales of District Four [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018845
Comments: 1
Kudos: 46





	On the Cusp of Revolution

**Author's Note:**

> This is fairly dark, compared to most of these short stories. Be warned.

Finnick is in the Capitol when he sees the announcement.

Specifically, he’s in Linus Silverbreath’s bed, slowly and decadently licking molten chocolate off the man’s unnaturally smooth and hairless skin. He’s one of  _ those  _ Capitolites who looks like he could be in his thirties face-wise, but he has the skin of a twelve year-old and talks about the forty-second Games as if he were there.

He’s also one of _those_ Capitolites who needs to be wooed, requiring pomp almost bigger than the Opening Ceremony. It’s been hours since they left the restaurant/club/petting zoo they’d 'met' at and they still haven’t fucked. Just light teasing touches and kisses and tugs on his hair as a reminder: _let’s_ _take our time._

Once upon a time, Finnick thought he preferred it this way, when they gave him enough time to work up to it. He's since changed his mind.

The television flickers through another wedding dress and Linus sucks in a breath - because of the dress or what Finnick’s tongue is doing to his thighs, it's unclear. “Oh, that one’s lovely but the tulle is a little garish, don’t you think?”

“Mmm.” Finnick agrees without looking. He could not be less interested in Katniss Everdeen’s wedding dresses. Luckily he has the excuse of being preoccupied.

Not that he isn't interested in Katniss _ herself. _ But the real Katniss, whoever that might be behind the frankly laughable mask she wears on camera these days. The girl is not a good actor, that is apparent. Finnick doubts she ever will be - she reminds him a bit too much of Johanna, who has never been able to pull it off either, but of course much more innocent than the reckless District 7 Victor.

_ “Just so fucking precious,”  _ Johanna had sneered when they’d all gathered around to watch Katniss and Peeta make out in that cave last year.  _ “Look at her, she’s pure. Ugh.” _

Finnick smears a stripe of chocolate on Linus’s hipbone, trying not to rush it and get too close because then Linus will pull on his hair to remind him again to slow down and it isn't exactly painful but it is  _ annoying _ \- like he's a misbehaving dog who needs a gentle correction. 

It's small mercies that Linus wasn’t a woman, because if so she’d probably want him to be a bit more chatty right now, offering his opinions on the wedding dresses and of course saccharine compliments about how  _ she’d  _ look in the dresses - and even though he will never,  _ ever  _ say anything that would make them think they’d actually have a shot of “tying him down,” they would want him to tease them with the idea so they could laugh about it. 

_ “Oh, I know you’d never settle down dear. But still it’s fun to fantasize isn’t it?” _

There's a tug at his head, and this one  _ is  _ a little painful. Finnick looks up to see Linus giving him a reproachful look, complete with wobbling lip. He'd accidentally bit at Linus's thigh -  _ barely,  _ hardly even a graze of his teeth, but still it's a slip. 

Finnick pastes on a dutifully apologetic expression, kisses at the spot, and wonders how Linus would go out in the Bloodbath. Knife to the back? Bisected with a sword? When he was younger he used to find the thoughts of decapitated heads satisfying, their painted faces twisted into a bloody and comical look of surprise - but he can't let his mind go there anymore, not without remembering the gore of watching Triston’s head get hacked off and tasting bile in his throat. He hadn’t thrown up, but James from District Five had in the next cubicle and sometimes Finnick swears he can still catch a whiff of the stench.

Just as thoughts of Linus being impaled with a spear flicker into his head, the symbol of the Hunger Games appears on the tv. 

“It’s the Quarter Quell announcement.” Linus murmurs and  _ now  _ Finnick is paying attention. 

He lifts his head up, replacing his mouth with his fingers while resting his head against Linus’s stomach as an excuse to watch it. With any luck, Linus will get impatient after this and they can finally stop drawing this out.

Snow is on the screen and yammering on about the Quarter Quell and the Dark Days and the need to make fresh the memory of why rebellion was a catastrophic idea. 

_ Someone should just shoot him,  _ Finnick thinks, watching Snow’s unnaturally glistening teeth. It would be difficult, practically impossible because of the security at the crowds, but maybe if someone has good aim they could do it from one of the nearby buildings. He wonders if Katniss’s aim is good enough - Haymitch, who’d been the closest to something that looked like  _ proud  _ (Lyme would’ve called it “smug”) during the Games last year than Finnick had ever seen him, probably would say it is.

Finally he gets to the announcement of this year. Linus is trying to gently push Finnick's head back down but he ignores it for the moment - he has an excuse, there's no doubt he'll be mentoring yet again so unlike Katniss’s silly dresses this is actually relevant to him. 

Not to mention Plutarch has finally wiggled into that coveted Head Gamemaker slot. Mags says he can be trusted and Finnick learned his lesson about  _ never  _ doubting Mags when he’d ignored her advice about not drinking standing water and gotten violently sick his second day in the arena. (She’d sent him a water filter after that and he could just imagine the look on her face and the mumbled  _ idiot boy  _ on her lips).

So, if Mags is correct and Plutarch is trustworthy, then Finnick's sure they're in for an interesting Games this year. The Capitol will want to overcorrect of course because of their enormous fuck up last year - it will be telling to see how Plutarch handled that. There's a possibility that he’ll need to play into their show for a few years, gain their trust, and then once the time is right-

“On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.”

“Oh!” Linus’s hands still in Finnick’s hair. “Wait what?”

_ Wait what  _ indeed. 

Existing pool of victors?

Finnick has always been quick, but this one takes a few moments to sink in.

When it does, he can hear a woman screaming.

It’s not real, he knows it’s not real, but it is. Somewhere, miles and miles and miles away a woman is screaming and tearing at her skin. She’s throwing plates, glasses, anything she can get her hands on. She’s watching as invisible heads roll to her feet. It’s heartbreaking and horrific and someone should comfort her. Someone should hold her and kiss her hair and whisper that  _ it’s okay it’s okay you’re not going back you’re never going back it’ll be okay. _

But Finnick is here. 

“That’ll be tough for some of the Districts with older victors.” Linus is saying, somewhere very far away. “It's been forever since 9 and 11 have won. But District 4 has good odds. You’ve got five male victors and four female victors, right?”

“Three females.” Finnick replies. He thinks he replies. The words are coming out of his mouth but he doesn’t really have control over them. He’s not even sure he’s really here. “Athena died a few years back.”

“Oh, I didn’t hear about that.”

Yeah, he wouldn’t have. It's not exactly the sort of story they would want hitting the Capitol or any of the other Districts. Athena hung herself out of the second story window after her son was reaped and then killed on day eight of the Games. By Johanna, actually, though Finnick had never told Jo about it - he knew it would bother her more than she would ever let on. 

“Well, at least one of them is healthy and young enough.” Linus rubs a soothing hand on his scalp. “I remember Meri’s Games, she was fantastic. Not as good as  _ you,  _ of course.”

Distantly, Finnick recognizes that Linus is trying to make him feel better. And yeah, there’s Meri who could potentially do well in the Games, but Meri has kids and if her name isn’t called there is absolutely no way in hell she’s volunteering for Mags or Annie.

_ Annie.  _ Finnick wants to run out of this apartment and onto the train - hell, he’d  _ sprint  _ all the way to District 4 if they’d let him. 

Failing that, he at least wants to be allowed to curl up into a ball and cry. 

But he can’t, he’s not allowed, hasn’t been for eight years since his first round of appointments when he was still permitted to be childlike (and yes, it makes him sick to think about  _ why  _ that was the case - but there is a part of him that misses it because if he’s not allowed to fight back or run away then he should at least be allowed to cry). 

“If they call your name, I bet you’d win.”

Finnick might  _ actually  _ snap Linus’s neck.

In training, they separated the male and female trainees young. Friendships, and especially relationships between the genders were expressly forbidden.

It wasn’t cruelty. It was survival - the trust between district partners was an uneasy alliance at best, because as they all knew (or at least, before some poison berries changed the game) only one person could make it out of the arena alive. 

In Districts One and Two they treated killing like playing- they made it a game, and trained their tributes to have fun while they killed. In Four, they treated killing like fishing - dispassionate, necessary, distant. It was considered in bad taste for a tribute to celebrate killing another tribute. 

The key was not to  _ know  _ them. Form alliances, yes, get to know the other tributes’ skills and weaknesses, but never, ever see them as people. They were just fish, and killing them was necessary for survival. 

Johanna would be in the arena. Possibly Seeder. Definitely Chaff. Beetee. Little Katniss Everdeen who had to put a backpack over her boyfriend’s thighs due to shyness. Maybe Haymitch.

Meri, with her three children. 

Or  Mags _.  _

Or  Annie _. _

Finnick doesn’t know what would be worse - for him to be in the arena or for him to  _ not  _ be in the arena and watch as they were all torn apart.

“Are you upset?” Linus asks him, because even the world’s most vapid, stupidest, selfish person would pick up on it.

Finnick turns to look at him and for a second allows himself to  _ fantasize. _

He thinks about how Linus’s throat would feel under his palm. He’s only done that once, to Opal Clearview, when he was seventeen. She hadn’t even really been doing anything too awful. It probably had less to do with her and more to do with his tribute being eaten alive by salamander mutts the day before, or probably the woman who’d asked for him to go down on her while they watched the death recaps that night or the man a few nights before that who’d left him shaking and brutalized with a necklace of fingerprints. 

So he doesn’t even really remember what Opal said or did but she did  something  rather innocuous ( _ relatively,  _ he has to remind himself in order to not feel like a monster.  _ Relatively  _ innocuous because she bought him and she had to know that he’d rather be anywhere except in her bed) and Finnick snapped. It had probably been something about how sweet or charming or harmless he was because he remembers thinking  _ no I’ve killed seven ~~people~~ children  _ and feeling sickly triumphant when she seemed to realize that, her hands flying to scratch at his arms.

It hadn’t lasted for more than a few seconds. Just a few seconds of satisfaction followed by instant horror and him immediately scrambling back, apologizing and begging and promising that he didn’t mean it, please don’t tell anyone it was just a flashback to the Games, he didn’t mean to hurt her, he’d never hurt her or anyone on purpose please just don’t tell anyone.

But she’d looked at him and seen him for what he really was - not a placid and trained lapdog but a mutt who’d been beaten into submission.

And he’d just bitten his owner. 

When he finally was allowed to arrive home, the doctors said that it was an allergic reaction that killed his mother. Strawberries, they’d said.

_ “She loves strawberries,”  _ Finnick had replied numbly.  _ “She eats them all the time.” _

_ “Well… sometimes these things develop suddenly.” _

Her tongue had swollen up and she’d asphyxiated.

Finnick remembers her often. He thinks about how she’d looked on that metal table, and wonders how long she’d suffocated. Had it just been for a few seconds, the amount of time that his hand had been around Opal’s throat? Or had it been long, several minutes of oxygen shutting off to her brain. 

Had they done it silently or had they explained to her why she was being executed? 

Did she know it was his fault?

Finnick turns away from Linus’s face and resumes stroking his thigh. 

“I’m just thinking about poor little Katniss,” He says, somewhere between a sneer and a wistful sigh. “Now we’ll never get to see her in her wedding dress.”

That’s what the Capitolites will be most upset about and as much as it’s infuriating, it’s  _ useful.  _ They’ve all bought into the star-crossed lovers ploy and this will absolutely devastate them. Finnick’s not an idiot - he knows that this is Snow’s way of taking out the threat that Katniss Everdeen poses, and as an added bonus clearing out any other potentially rebellious victors.

But he thinks Snow might have just overcorrected too far. The 74th Games are fresh enough on everyone’s mind that it will feel as if the  _ Capitol citizens  _ are being punished by having their new toys taken away before they get the chance to play with them properly. Even if Katniss and Peeta are probably safe from being  played with  the way that some of the more depraved Capitolites would want to thanks to their “undying love” for each other, their relationship by itself is still emotional porn for the spoiled elite.

Case in point - Linus actually sounds a bit sad as he replies, “Oh, that’s so true. Unless - maybe she could win? And maybe Haymitch will go in instead. That would be the best case scenario. She could fight back to her love.” 

“Perhaps."

It’s wrong, but there’s part of him that is brimming with anticipation. He doesn’t know if his name will be pulled - depends, do the Gamemakers care more about making a better show or the loss of revenue from not being able to sell him anymore if he dies? Or maybe Snow has finally figured out that Finnick is too dangerous to let live - but there is a small part of him that’s screaming  _ finally.  _

He doesn’t want to fight the other victors, doesn’t even want to  consider  the possibility of having to kill his friends, but at least in the arena he can do more than smile and beg for more and pretend that he doesn’t want to hurt every single person who touches him.

And maybe, _just maybe,_ Plutarch will still have a way to spin this in their favor.

Finnick sighs again. “I certainly hope I won’t have to kill her.” He says innocently, and he's aiming to wound.

Linus flinches under him. 

_ Good,  _ Finnick thinks, and when he kisses the inside of Linus’s thigh he imagines digging his teeth in and ripping. 

**Author's Note:**

> One of my favorite Hunger Games fics of all times is [Where Soul Meets Body](https://archiveofourown.org/works/466496/chapters/805808) and while this verse is different, there are a few details and headcanons that I have not been able to let go of from that perfect fic. 
> 
> So there are a few details that you might notice as being similar (such as in the Haymitch POV fic where Finnick is kept from Annie after the end of the Games, or in this one where it's mentioned that his mother dies from an allergic reaction) that I will give credit as being inspired by that fic (which absolutely everyone should read, in my opinion) simply because they exist in my head as being canon details thanks to that fic.


End file.
